“Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.” ~ Robertson Davies

“Heroes are ordinary people who make themselves extraordinary.” ~ Gerard Way

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live an extraordinary life? Have you ever wished you were something a bit more extraordinary yourself?

Even if you’re not living up to your potential right now (and extraordinary doesn’t require perfection), it’s important to know that you are not merely the sum of your thoughts, beliefs and habits.

You are also what lies beneath the surface, what rests dormant inside of you. In other words, you are also your God-given potential. That extraordinary potential is part of who you are. It is what you can become. It is what is possible. It is what you were meant to experience, even if it seems like it’s still light-years away.

And that is extraordinary!

Extraordinary is as Extraordinary does

So what does it mean to be extraordinary anyway?

Well, in a word, it means to exceed ordinary. And if ordinary means doing and thinking and believing what most people do, think and believe, then being extraordinary means being different than most.

Most people don’t read personal development blogs or seek inspiration or motivation to supercharge their day. Most people don’t do much reading at all, for that matter.

But that’s not you!

Most people don’t spend much time thinking about the quality of the friends they attract, or the quality of their thoughts or the quality of their character. Even fewer do much about it.

But that’s not you!

Most people let their time slip by one tick at a time, never setting goals or working to improve themselves in substantive ways or challenging their own comfort zones.

But that’s not you either!

You aim higher and live with more passion and purpose than most—or you’re learning how to. You create opportunities and grow and challenge yourself—or you’re taking the initial steps to.

And that’s pretty extraordinary!

The reason I know this about you is because the unextraordinary tend to wade in the shallow pools of their own stagnation, hoping and wishing and never doing.

But not you.

You look for insight and inspiration and the next step that will take you to the next level. You’re here, doing that now, I suspect.

And that’s also pretty extraordinary.

Supercharge Your Extraordinariness

So if extraordinary is as extraordinary does, by doing more things extraordinarily, your life itself will become extraordinary … if you are willing to do the work to get there, of course.

Ordinary focus and commitment and passion lacks the pulling power to lift you to the level of extraordinary. After all, extraordinary is extra-ordinary. You just can’t reach it by virtue of ordinary effort. The “extra” is required.

So begin to supercharge your life in the following 10 areas for an extraordinary impact of legendary proportions.

Extraordinary Courage

You were meant to face your fears and overcome them with a steely sort of courage, to stand tall without apology as a unique individual of value and character. You were born to make a difference, to stand for something, to be willing to fight for fundamental principles of human freedom and dignity.

The extraordinary nature of your courage is obvious in your willingness to endure public ridicule for what’s right. It shows in your unwillingness to compromise your values for a quick and easy gain or a superficial fix.

You don’t throw in your hand simply because someone else thinks you should. Your life is marked by dignity and decency and truth and honor. Such things call on our deepest reservoirs of courage. That kind of courage shapes our experiences and makes life that much more extraordinary.

Extraordinary Service

There are people who wake up every morning knowing they matter, knowing they make the world a better pace, knowing they’re needed, that they add joy and happiness to a few more hearts on the planet.

There are people who, Gandhi-like, give all of themselves to make an extraordinary difference. Others give more modestly, but also profoundly. They give from their hearts, out of compassion and a deep seeded desire to make a difference.

It should be noted that obligatory giving is not really service. It is being taken from, consensually or not. So extraordinary giving is much more than simply paying your taxes so the government can take care of some anonymous, faceless group.

Rather, it is freely sharing your time and means and talents and energy. It’s going out of your way to bless and lift and serve. It’s stopping to help push a car or volunteering with a favorite charity or working for a worthy cause or visiting shut-ins and comforting those who mourn and feeding the hungry and looking for opportunities to do good continually.

You can make an extraordinary difference by being conscious of the effect your example has on others, by developing a compelling sense of compassion, by doing random acts of kindness, by reaching out of your myopic world into a larger universe to effect change that actually improves life for those in need of improvement.

But the most important difference you will likely ever make will be the service you render the one, the individual, one-on-one, eye to eye, hand to hand, heart to heart. It’s a good thing to provide resources to a group in need. But there’s something deeply sublime, something uniquely extraordinary in personally reaching into the life of another human being to provide hope and help and love.

Extraordinary Happiness

Happiness is the condition of the human experience when major obstacles to it have been largely overcome and our lives are significantly aligned with True North principles that naturally produce it.

Extraordinary happiness is the synergistic result of supportive thought, combined with self-affirming belief, combined with right action, combined with living with integrity to universal principles.

In other words, happiness is the natural result of positive, optimistic, opportunity and possibility thinking, believing life matters and yours specifically does too, that there are answers to life’s most difficult challenges, while actively creating meaning and pursuing growth and living an honest and grateful and loving life.

The point is, happiness is not the result of any one thing. It’s a combination of traits and characteristics, each one of which can add depth and longevity to our happiness, but are required on a larger scale to reach the extraordinary.

Extraordinary Character

Character is the heart and blood of the organism, its vitality and moral authority. It is what most fundamentally reflects the heart and defines us at the core. Character is the substance of reputation, the foundation of trust, the seed and fruit of behavior. (<– Tweet this last sentence!)

Extraordinary character is telling the truth because it’s true, not for fear of being caught in a lie. It’s not the self-serving kind of pseudo-character that’s performed for public consumption. It’s kindness when kindness isn’t deserved and no one is around to see it. It’s the inner strength that risks ostracism for doing what’s right when what’s right is no longer popular.

There is no extraordinary character without extraordinary self-discipline and self-mastery. At the root of exceptional character is an enduring commitment and consistent integrity. The key, and most difficult part to master, is the consistency. And that’s why we so honor those with extraordinary character.

Extraordinary Love

Let’s admit it. Loving others takes work. It’s pretty easy to love those who make loving them easy. But it requires a ton of inside-work on the soul to love those who make us work for it. Only when we can love those who are difficult to love, those who don’t return our love, those who are prickly and sharp and nasty, can we claim extraordinary love.

But that is the kind of love that changes lives … starting with our own. That kind of love, what might be called Biblical Charity, is a reflection of who we are rather than the result of the quality or nature of any particular relationship we enjoy.

Perhaps the only way to experience love at this level is to practice spontaneous forgiveness. When someone offends, forgive them instantaneously. When you can do that, extraordinary love will be within reach.

Extraordinary love also requires seeing through the distorting film of fear and insecurity, of character flaws and personality disorders at the inner essence and potential of the person who most needs love while making it most challenging to give it. But when we have attained the ability to love the unlovable, we’ll experience its fruit as compassion, kindness, peace and joy to an extraordinary degree as well.

Extraordinary Relationships

We were put on earth to form families and friendships and build and nurture those relationships to become no less than celestial. But so many people endure relationships that are far from the ideal.

They have learned to cope with relationships that just don’t satisfy or are painful or destructive. And yet we were meant to have extraordinary friendships and extraordinary marriages and experience an extraordinary closeness to our children.

So what gets in the way of it all?

Mostly we do.

We get greedy and selfish and prideful and stingy and insecure and fearful. We start counting offenses and taking things personally and interpreting things rashly and saying things we shouldn’t say and doing things that undermine those very relationships we regret not being closer.

So the best way to develop extraordinary relationships is to work on the gears under the hood of our own lives. Improve the self and everything the self is associated with improves as well, including our relationships.

Warning:Work at improving yourself, not your partner’s self. Your work is under your own hood, not someone else’s. Even with our children, the most productive work we will do under their hoods is by spending time under our own. Better people tend to make better parents, after all. And better parents make better kids.

Extraordinary Success

This one is difficult to clearly identify because success can be defined in so many different ways. The most limiting definition (simply because it leaves out so much that’s infinitely more important) is the traditional success of professional ladder-climbing.

But no matter the kind of success you choose to pursue, you can be successful in an extraordinary way if you plan for it, prepare for it, invest in it, and work at it. But what you specifically plan and prepare and invest and work on depends on what you’re willing to succeed at.

My best advice is to learn from the leaders in the field in whatever area of life you want to be successful. Master what they do. Then do it your own way. Resist the temptation to simply duplicate their success. Extraordinary success is rarely accomplished that way.

Extraordinary Spirituality

We are both spiritual and physical beings. And yet we pay incredibly more attention to our physical sides. I believe we do so to our own detriment. If we work more on getting in tune with the Divine, our lives can be profoundly changed in dramatic ways.

I’ve known addicts and inmates and those with horrible pasts and dreadful thoughts about themselves and about life who then connected with their spiritual sides, who reached up to feed that connection and are now living deeply meaningful lives of real purpose and joy.

The rewards of a spiritual life are real and include the fine-tuning of conscience and the honed ability to recognize truth from error. It includes attaining greater insight and wisdom and living life at its most joyful. Life becomes sweeter. Happier. Better. We gain a sort of humble confidence that can only be felt, not described. Our outsides come to better reflect our insides and our insides experience an extraordinary peace.

Extraordinary Growth

We just visited Disneyland recently. And while it’s not truly the happiest place on earth, it’s a pretty good commercialized version of something that scores pretty high on that scale nonetheless.

But what I love about Disney is the Fastpass system where you can get an early ticket and go back at the prescribed time to skip most of the line-waiting. It’s the car-pool lane to Disney attractions.

We can have that in the area of personal growth as well! We can Fastpass and car-pool our way to extraordinary growth when we approach it with sincerity and humility and an open heart.

But there has to be a passion for growth. So often we read posts in the personal development genre and nod and smile knowingly and say to ourselves, “Yes, yes. This is good stuff. So insightful!” And then do nothing to apply it.

While extraordinary growth doesn’t require a particular system or method for growth, it does require an open heart, passion, attention, effort, the ability to learn from mistakes without beating ourselves up for making them, and taking one step at a time toward the goal of self-improvement, then celebrating each extraordinary step toward success.

Extraordinary Wisdom

So many of us simply stop learning much on our own once we’ve scored the college degree and have it hanging on the wall like a trophy to prove our competence. We cross the finish line and stop. We stop learning and stop researching and stop thinking, unless, of course, work requires an occasional workshop for re-licensing.

But extraordinary people spend their whole lives learning. They are humble enough to admit deficiencies in their knowledge and passionate enough about learning to seek to fill in those holes.

They look at life from different perspectives and are open to learning from the expert and novice alike. They love discovering new truths and uncovering new layers of insight. They are passionate about growth and development. And so they spend considerable time in its pursuit.

Afterthoughts

Life is an extraordinary experience. We can make our lives even more extraordinary by doing even more things extraordinarily. I invite you to choose an area you think will most benefit your extraordinariness from above, then go at it. Learn what you can learn. Do what you can do.

And see what can happen to an ordinary life.

YOUR TURN!

Please Like and Tweet this post to remind others we were all born to be extraordinary.

Ken…such a great post!! This is one I’m going to save and re-read every day for the next 3 weeks or so. There is a TON of great content here, in addition to the links for other great thoughts and ideas.

So true, David. There would be so much more health and joy and success out there if people followed your advice and did just a little more — ate a little more healthy, walked a little more often, read a little everyday, just stepped up their game a little more.

I love this, Ken. I’ve been re-evaluating many aspects of my life, and you’ve touched on one of them: service. I’m blessed with so much, but don’t give back as often as I could. I think it’s time to get outside myself, get into the world and help someone. Thanks for the encouraging push. =)Kaylee recently posted … Strap on Your Overalls and Tend to Your Goals Like a Good Farmer

I love this, Kaylee! So glad to have provided the loving nudge. PLEASE let me know hoe it goes. I would love to hear about your experiences as you look for a way to give that fits you. There are so many organizations and ways to make a difference. So do a little research (but don’t get hung up on it or you’ll never get out the door!) and experiment. If volunteering in a soup kitchen doesn’t do it for you, maybe working with a group that helps children in low income countries or lost dogs or beached whales or abuse victims or cancer patients will. The options are almost (and sadly) endless.

And then let me know how it makes you feel and changes your life as you reach out to help change others’

Hey Ken,
This was such a great post! I recently started doing research for a company I’m working for and I think your section on Extraordinary Happiness is so spot on.

“happiness is the natural result of positive, optimistic, opportunity and possibility thinking, believing life matters and yours specifically does too, that there are answers to life’s most difficult challenges, while actively creating meaning and pursuing growth and living an honest and grateful and loving life.”

Anyway, thanks for taking so much time to provide this great content. If you have a second, I’d love it if you checked out our new site: http://www.thankaday.com as we’re trying to promote happiness and wellbeing to thousands of people around the world.

I checked out your site and LOVE the concept. For me, I think you need a few obvious links that would take a reader to an About page or contact info. I felt the need for some explanation and instruction on how to use the site. Maybe something about email updates as it grows and more expressions of gratitude are added. Just my thoughts.

But I have to say, the huge images add something unique and compelling to the genre. Hope it really takes off for you.

I am ever amazed at the wonder you express for life. I think I am at a point where I see that I stopped pushing myself and I want to start becoming the best I can be again. I feel overwhelmed with it all at times, so many things to improve that I don’t know where to begin. So thank you for sharing your insights, it gives me a few places to look to start. Now if I can only stay focused on one at a time!

What you said about relationships really got me thinking. I know when I feel my life is out of control I begin trying to control everything and everyone around me; instead of stepping back and observing what happens, I fight it. So I think I will start by being a better listener and observer. I will try to hold my insecurities and impatience and be aware of them. I will slow down, focus and be there for my husband and kids. (My youngest just started kindergarten…I think it is making me feel time is slipping by faster than I would like.)

See, you helped me find my way to a goal! I better go write it on my mirror so I look at it daily! Thank you.

Little personal development vacations are just fine. Sometimes we need them, especially if we are particularly hard on ourselves. I think I sense that about you. Am I right? If so, you might want to start there as well so you don;t get burned out or make growth something you punish yourself into. Try to be a little more self-accepting and patient with your attempt at growth.

Look at your own personal growth as you would your baby’s. We are all stumbling through life trying to figure it all out. You. Me. All of us. So be sure you treat yourself with the same tenderness you would a young child learning to walk and speak. Smile at your weaknesses more than condemn. Laugh when you stumble and fall down when you knew you could have done better much like you would when a toddler bumps off a wall right there in front of him.

Take yourself by the hand and lead yourself down the hall, so to speak. Retry and regroup and relearn and forgive and love yourself. Personal growth should be an exhilarating ride, not a punitive, frustrating black hole. So I would recommend going at it with a degree of light-heartedness. Take it seriously in your commitment and perseverance, but ease up on the expectation that you must be this way or that way no later than yesterday.

But I love the starting point you decided on (and that you were able to come to that point while commenting here!).

“So I think I will start by being a better listener and observer. I will try to hold my insecurities and impatience and be aware of them. I will slow down, focus and be there for my husband and kids.” This is nice. Life is messy. And when we try to hold it all together in some particular way, stuffing all the pieces into a box that’s too small or that the “pieces” outgrew, we end up bending and damaging the parts of the puzzle we most need to complete the picture.

I hope you let me know how it goes. And remember, there will be up days and down days. Try to follow your growth over time, not on an hour-by-hour or day-by-day framework. See the bigger picture. And again, let me know how I can help in the process!

Such an inspirational text, I have really enjoy to read it! I totally agree, we all are special in our own ways, every person was born to be extraordinary in some ways. But we are the same as well, we have to live together with responsibility and care. That’s the most beautiful ambivalency of the human nature.Kata recently posted … Mik a fogpótlás legkorszerűbb módszerei?

“the most beautiful ambivalency of human nature” — I like that! We are at once uniquely extraordinary and can become more so, and are all the same. There is a universality to human nature and yet within that universal condition, we have extremely different experiences that shape us in very different ways. Human choice is the great distinguishing factor as we choose how to respond to the pushes and pulls of human nature and to the experiences that are unique to our circumstances.

Awesome, Ken. When we are reminded of our original extraordinary nature we can be a fabulous gift to humanity.
Indeed, something extraordinary exists in all of.
We must never forget this.
Our extraordinary essence wants to express – we must not interfere.
When our woeful attitude plummets to zero, we become our own hero.
When an attitude of WOW soars, our hidden talents roar.rob white recently posted … I’m a Mental Magician

Reading this post has been like eating an intense piece of belgian chocolate! I had to stop at most sentences and dwell on the taste and meaning to take it all in!
I especially loved the part about unconditional love and kindness! It is something I have to constantly remind myself of!
You brought back beautiful memories of precious lessons I learned from an English teacher I had at school! she demanded I never use a word unless I mean it! Thank you for that among other things!
love and light
Deena

Wow! Like Belgian chocolate, eh? I had to call my wife over to read that one! I can’t say that I’ve heard that comparison before. I’ll have to look into using that line to market my blog! “Personal Development as Intense as a piece of Belgian Chocolate.” Haha! I like it! Thank you so much for your kind words, Deena. I’ll be repeating that line … often! 🙂

Sounds like you had a great English teacher. I love it when teachers weave life lessons into their academic lessons. Kids need all those words of encouragement and motivation. We all do, of course, but kids have so much to wade through to figure out who they are and who want to be all the while battling the onslaught of hormonal confusion, family issues, school pressure, peer pressure and all.

As for love and kindness, it’s what makes the world go round, at least the way it’s supposed to! It seems to me that too many people focus so much of their attention of BEING loved that they become needy and never develop those qualities that would have most assured being loved because instead of seeking it, they’re busy GIVING it.

This post is packed with great encouragement for an extraordinary life. I am glad that you recognized the “God-given potential” that we really are. It is at the core of all of us. This is an amazing thing in itself because it means that anybody can achieve and manifest an extraordinary life. It doesn’t matter what lot we have been given.

Thanks for all the wonderful encouragement here. This is the kind of post to come back to every few months or so.Joshua Tilghman recently posted … A Conversation With God

I hoped it would be an encouraging post. As for recognizing our potential is God-given, that belief is the source of my optimism and hope and enthusiasm in and for humanity.

“This is an amazing thing in itself because it means that anybody can achieve and manifest an extraordinary life. It doesn’t matter what lot we have been given.” — This sums it up perfectly, Joshua. Well said.

The problem is when people grope in the dark too long, never thinking to look “up” once in a while to get their bearings. Some end up walking off cliffs and bumping into things so often they decide to sit down and stop trying to get anywhere. So potential is left untapped and people’s true lives left undiscovered.

Hopefully I can get a couple people here and there to rethink where it is they can look for a strength that is beyond anything a few words of encouragement can provide.

Yep, that belief is a first step to getting the ball of our extraordinariness going. But it’s sort of a mutual thing, for lack of a better way of saying it. While believing in ourselves can get us to act on our extraordinariness, acting extraordinary even when we don’t believe we are can still help us begin to suspect that we just may be a little extraordinary. One feeds the other in an wonderful upward spiral.

Thank you so much for this extraordinary post, Ken. It’s so uplifting. It just brings to mind something that happened to me yesterday.

Sometimes we think that doing something out of the ordinary will be met by negativity from other people. Many times this is really not so.

Yesterday I went for a casting and noticed some of the script involved me swearing. I told the Director respectfully that I’m happy to do the other parts, but will leave out the swearing because I don’t swear. He was totally happy with it and the fact that I was brave enough to state my case.Anne recently posted … The Obvious Answer

You’re my hero, Anne! I LOVE that story. I think we’re a dying breed, you and me. The number of people who would even care about the swearing, much less would exercise the courage to say something about it when work is on the line is shrinking … it seems to me, anyway. I hope I’m wrong, but I suspect I’m not. It has just become so pervasive. I also love that the director respected your position.

As a high school teacher, I’m known for requiring uplifted language in my classroom. So many other teachers allow it or even use it. But my kids tend to respect the fact that I do have the standard.

So often we fear others will judge and condemn us for the standards we refuse to compromise. But more often than not, respect is the response.

A great article, it has made me really thinking deep about our extraordinary being. Honestly, I won’t say that I would extraordinary, maybe from some special or personal views. From a global view, we all are ants, and our lives can’t change anything, from this global view, we only count for one from the 7billion. But our personalities are individual and extraordinary, that’s so true!Gabo recently posted … A fogbeültetés előnyei

Ah, Gabo, but that one in 7 billion can influence 10 people, each of whom can influence 10 others who then go out and influence 10 more. That’s already 1,000! Think about those numbers continuing to radiate outward. This way, it wouldn’t take long to have a huge impact on a huge number of people. And that is quite extraordinary.

I have to kindly disagree with your assessment that we’re ants. True, looked at from afar, we may seem ant-like—tons of people running around all over the globe. But that’s where the comparison stops and our extraordinariness starts.

Ants look for food. Find it and communicate it to the colony. A single file line is formed to transport the food back to the nest. Then more food is sought and more lines formed and more food carried back home. Not much else of note happens.

Ants build no hospitals, invent nothing that spares humanity time or suffering. No vaccines or works of art or music scores or random acts of kindness are performed or created. Ants don’t produce authors or philosophers or monks or priests or nurses or social workers or teachers.

They act by pre-programmed instinct. Ants don’t aspire to a life of service. They don’t set goals or have a personal development plan. They don’t live with integrity to a set of moral values or stand up to the colony when one or more ants think the colony violated another ant’s civil rights. They have no civil rights. They have no constitutions and never battle themselves to change an injustice.

No ant will ever raise a hand against another ant for having enslaved an aphid and made it work for the benefit of the ant colony. No ant will ever write a document or give a speech or rally the rest of the colony behind a cause. They will never join a club or donate to an organization that serves the needs of a neglected part of the colony.

But we do those things all the time … and so much more. We are indeed truly and spectacularly live our lives in ways that extend and expand that extraordinariness. The act of overcoming years of abuse is extraordinary. The act of forgiving a spouse or a friend or a parent is extraordinary. The act of reaching out to another human being in love and compassion is extraordinary. The act of developing a talent or overcoming a character weakness or improving a personality is truly extraordinary.

Think about it. We can change ourselves and change our relationships. We can change our neighborhood and community. We can join with others to change the way the government treats a group or how others think about a law or a right or a responsibility. There are the Martin Luther Kings and Gandhis and Mandelas and the like. But there are also moms who help a lost child rediscover herself and friends who help a buddy overcome a failed relationship and neighbors who help a disabled person with his trashcans and others who help total strangers. We truly can change things for people.

You, Gabo, are an extraordinary creation of beauty and intelligence and potential. You are no ant in any stretch of the imagination. You are you and you are here and you can become what you’re willing to make yourself. You are indeed, without doubt, an extraordinary creation. I hope you believe that. I do.

Okay, perhaps a little overkill on this one, but had a thought and ran with it! 🙂

Thanks for the comment, Gabo. I hope I didn’t overwhelm you with my reply. Haha!

Just very quietly: This post and your replies has left me all mellow inside.

I’m thinking Extraordinary Kindness when I think of this blog, and I sense that quite a few readers would agree with me. I’m a school teacher, too. And I know from my classroom that the kids don’t care how much you know, untill they know how much you care.

Maybe a good writer could write a post like this – only maybe -but I cannot think of many who do the rest. I’m talking music, not lyrics here.

Thanks so much Erik. You’re too kind yourself. So you’re a school teacher, too. What grade level(s) do you teach? If middle or high school, what subject(s)? Now that’s an extraordinary profession that allows us to have an extraordinary impact on the next generation.

What you say about caring before they care is so true. And it seems to me that the more they come to sense that I care, the more they pay attention to what I’m teaching.

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About Me

My name is Ken Wert, the founder of M2bH. My purpose here is to teach you how to live a richer life of greater purpose and meaning, of mind-blowing possibility and deeper, more soul-satisfying happiness than you ever dreamt was possible. Join us on this happy adventure as you learn how to unlock your hidden potential to enjoy the rewards of a life well lived. Read more ...